


as many times as it takes

by inkandrainstorm



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Hand Jobs, M/M, bed sharing, but really don't know who's comforting who, cuddles gone steam, so honey the bees are sick, was supposed to be hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 18:20:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18834145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkandrainstorm/pseuds/inkandrainstorm
Summary: Shiro wants Keith to stay for awhile.





	as many times as it takes

**Author's Note:**

> can we for the sake of this fic pretend they didn’t have to go on a mission immediately after the whooping soulmate scene known as ‘as many times as it takes’ and shiro got to recuperate (with tlc from keith) thank very much

“Hey Keith?”

Keith pauses. He was almost there, almost out. There are several million thoughts going through his mind, very few he’d like to share and even less he’d like to act on but the urge to turn around and crawl into bed with Shiro and make sure he’s real and here is the one he likes least because it’s almost irrepressible. Every second in this room is torturous. In Shiro’s absence it bloomed shadows and darkness and the lonely thin air of cold, cold space. Now it’s incandescent with Shiro's return, with Shiro’s presence, like a steady beat in the centre of his chest, tinctured with dimness at the edges but glowing all the same. Glowing and growing, outwards and all over, consuming Keith in the all the ways he struggles to fight.

“Yeah?”

“How many times are you gonna have to save me before this is over?”

Keith smiles. This. There are so many things Keith is uncertain of. So many things that require time and acuminate patience to learn and perceive. But anything that pertains to Shiro, _for Shiro,_ it’s simple as drawing in air, simple as letting it go. “As many times as it takes.”

The ease of it is a bit frightening, like taking a look at something red and knowing it’s red, no debates, no way around it. It is what it is. Keith thinks of Shiro and it’s _always_ and _forever_ and _as many times as it takes._

He’s almost out of the door when he hears Shiro call for him again, this time quieter, so quiet it’s as if Shiro didn’t mean for him to hear.

“Yeah?” he pauses in the frame again. No reply comes, at least not immediately. Keith turns around, wondering if he’s hearing things.

“Will you stay?”

Is the relief playing on Keith’s unbidden wants? He stays silent and disbelieving a beat too long and Shiro sounds more fraught with nerves than Keith has ever heard.

“For a little while?” it sounds like _please_ and Shiro doesn’t have to add anything else, Keith’s feet move of their own accord.

“Yeah, of course.” he strides to Shiro’s bed, watches Shiro lie down and wonders if he should sit on the bed or on the platform or lie down with Shiro or stay standing. The decision is made for him when Shiro pats the space on the mattress with a tentative smile that falls short of his eyes.  

He shrugs off his jacket, shoes, removes his gloves and belt and sets them on the platform before he lowers himself next to Shiro. He leaves enough room between them to be traced around them individually, opting to forego the single pillow Shiro is using and rest his head on the cool spread. Still, he feels the heat from Shiro, warm and reaching for him in silent company.

Shiro lies on his back, studying the ceiling. Keith is on his side, studying him. Shiro’s hair is longer now, ragged and scruffy. An effervescent urge to comb through it with his fingers rises through Keith, sparks and fizzes at his fingertips. The stark lock of white falls over Shiro’s scar and eye where the skin underneath is more sunken than Keith has ever seen, tinged with a darkness that reflects in his eyes. His chin is studded with stubble. His mouth is pressed into a hard line and Keith wants to allay it with his lips.

Instead he turns over and stares at the low ceiling, blowing out a soft sigh. “How are you really, Shiro?”

There’s silence and breathing that grows more audible. “Lost, I think.” Shiro decides, confessional and enervated. “I don’t know where I’ve been. What I might have done. I don’t know who I am right now, Keith.”

Keith turns back on his side, gaze sharp on Shiro who’s still looking away. “You know who you are, Shiro.” he shifts closer, cups Shiro’s bare hard shoulder, “I know who you are. I know what you’re thinking. You’re not a monster, Shiro.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do!” Keith exclaims, sitting up. The need to expunge that disparaging line of thought from Shiro’s mind is so strong he comes near throttling him. He shifts even closer and looms over Shiro’s face with a hand pressing directly over his heart, forcing him to meet his eyes. “Listen to me Shiro, you’re not a monster. You will never be. The divide between human and monster involves choice when you have it and I know you wouldn’t choose to be that. We’re not even sure you were with the Galra all this time. I _know_ you, Shiro. And I don’t know anyone who cares more about safeguarding people than you do.”

He wants to add that he hopes someday Shiro will forgive himself for the guilt that lingers from his _Champion_ days, from the arena and cruelty captivity forced him to perform. _It’s not like last time, we don’t know that,_ Keith wants to add. But his speech faculty is immobilized by the way Shiro is looking at him. By the way his pewter eyes glaze over with an ocean of emotion that is hard to look on.

Shiro’s hand finds Keith’s on his own chest and intertwines. Their hands fit like the spaces between their fingers were designed specifically for each other.

“I thought I was going to die, Keith. I thought that was it for me.” he sounds detached, monotony in his voice at war with the intensity of his gaze. The quietness of his next confession is a mute kind of electricity, quicksilver, thorough and deadly. “I thought of you first.”

Keith inhales sharply, maybe. His mouth opens, maybe. His chest stills, certainly.

“I missed you.” Keith replies. It’s all he can manage. ‘I thought of you in death’ sounds a lot like ‘I love you’ and Keith can’t process a steamroller of this magnitude over his entire entity in this manner. It burns where their hands are laced, burns nice, burns sweet like praline. Burns better when Shiro holds tighter.

Shiro’s metal hand comes to cradle his head, stroking his hair once, twice, before nudging him down. Keith goes pliantly. He ends up haphazardly straddling Shiro’s thigh, his torso sprawled over Shiro’s. His other arm goes to Shiro’s side, latching on a tight as possible. The blood rushing in his ears and Shiro’s heartbeat under his head are indiscernible but the rhythm is soothing and Keith doesn’t fixate too hard.

Shiro is twice his width and under the soft heat of skin and singlet fabric lies a solid band of muscle. Keith snuggles down. Shiro’s scent is an ambrosial reminiscent of everything the word home means. He grazes over Shiro’s side as Shiro strokes his hair, their hands still clasped. Sombrely, in the warm lambency of content, Keith faintly muses how he would go happy now if a Galra canon or a comet blew them to pieces this instant.

“I missed you too.” Shiro whispers when Keith has forgotten his own admission. The light scratches on his scalp make him want to purr deeply like some kind of contented feline. He snuggles tighter, shifts higher on Shiro, boths his legs twined around Shiro’s significantly bigger one.

Keith stayed back to comfort Shiro but he’s the one that feels like he’s being pieced back together, one warm caress at a time. He would have been content with the knowledge of Shiro being back, with Shiro being on the Castle and in their midst. But now there’s this, roundabout I love yous (or what Keith seriously hopes it is) and snuggles like they were assembled to fit and it cultivates a blinding wildfire greed inside him. More, more, more. Tighter, closer, forever. He prays hard that no one comes looking for him or their leader this moment because Keith doesn’t think he could bring himself to move even if they were interrupted. Especially not when Shiro gently pries his hand free and brings it to Keith’s back to roam gingerly over every inch like he’s making _Keith_ is real and in the flesh. And when Shiro’s hand brushes over the bare skin at the small of his back where his shirt rode up, he does make a sound, some form of a whimper, close to a purr, and Shiro makes a breathy sound in return.

Shiro keeps his fingers there, tentative, unsure of its reception. When Keith makes no protest or sign of discomfort, he lays his palm down flat under the shirt, spanning the entire width of Keith’s lower back. Keith tries to keep from squirming, tries to keep still in spite of the honey shiver tracking each disc of his spine at Shiro’s touch on his bare flesh.  

He unknowingly inches up Shiro as he tries to contain himself, somehow ending up in the crook of Shiro’s neck, breathing against the soft place where his shoulder meets the column of his neck. Shiro’s fingers wound tighter in his hair, keeping him in place and Keith sighs.

It’s warm and a sheen is forming on Keith underneath the layers. But he wouldn’t move if he were promised the secrets of all the galaxies. Shiro’s breathing growing indeterminably serrated against the crown of his head fills Keith’s bloodstream with a headiness that’s out of bounds.

And it might as well all be a heady dream once Keith feels the press on the side of his thigh, one that had been laxer when he had assumed this position. Only in Keith’s dream does he feel Shiro hard against him, only in his dreams does Shiro touch him so tender and thorough it leaves him shaken with tears. But there is a hardness on his thigh and his own groin aches to centre itself over Shiro’s and just _feel._

“Keith.” Shiro lets out in a mangled gasp.

It takes a moment or two for Keith to pull himself out of the gathering arousal but once he does, his system is flooded with alarm. He tears his lips away from Shiro where they were pressed tight to the base of his throat, his mistake already evidenced by the slight red blotch there, lip-shaped.

“Shiro-” Keith isn’t sure what to say, how to justify what he just did.

“Are you okay?” Shiro cups the back of his head again, giving him no choice but to meet his eyes. They seem to be asking a lot more than he voiced and Keith wonders until the realization dawns. Propped up like this, right against the torso of Shiro’s who’s sitting them both up now, Shiro can feel Keith on his waist.

Keith sits up straighter in Shiro’s lap, straddling his thigh more firmly and nods.

He’s not sure how Shiro does it but his hand is between them before Keith can draw another unsteady breath, heel against the strain in Keith’s pants. “Is this okay?”

It’s barely a touch but a shudder rips through Keith, want spreading through him. Shiro’s eyes look larger and darker somehow, a stormbound sky two beats from sparking a ruthless conflagration. The explosion, Keith desires it recklessly.

He ruts into Shiro’s hand, slow and careful, and Shiro’s expression darkens further. It magnifies the fever going to Keith’s head and he does it again, rolls his hips into Shiro.

Shiro’s groan falls hot on his cheek and Keith answers with a gasp as Shiro reaches behind and cups Keith’s butt. “And this?” he asks, lips placed open and slovenly beneath Keith’s jaw.

“Shiro please,” Keith rocks forward again at angle, this time pushing up against Shiro’s bulge.

Shiro hisses against his skin, hips bucking up in reflex and making them both groan. He loosens one of Keith’s leg from his thigh, spreading and pushing it over his other leg to shove Keith straight up against him, aligning their hard cocks and sending pleasure through Keith that makes him bow and brace Shiro's shoulders.

“Do you want this?” Shiro asks and Keith is glad to hear the rasp in Shiro's voice because he looks more put together than Keith feels.

Keith lets out a laugh and ruts, “Is that answer enough?”

“No,” Shiro gives his ass a squeeze, pushing Keith up in a slow grind, “I want to hear you say it.”

“Hear me say what?” he nips Shiro’s throat, Shiro’s jaw, the corner of his lips while trying to let Shiro guide their rhythm and not push him on his back and rut against him until he comes. Shiro’s hands advance to his hips, settle in the nook of his waist and Keith almost shakes with desire, with the knowledge of Shiro’s patent strength that could fold and colour him some highly indecent ways.

“That you need me to touch you.”

Keith’s lips twist, “Why? Dream of that?”

Shiro fists Keith’s hair and tugs him gently back to face him, “Would… would that be weird?”

“No,” Keith says slowly, treading with caution as Shiro’s expression armours up, “Do you?”

He contemplates in an endless minute before replying carefully, “Yes.”

“Tell me.” Keith says breathlessly, pushing his hips again and reminding Shiro how much he’s into this, how he’s not judging him but needing him.

“I dream of you wanting me. Of you begging me. To touch you, to make you feel good.”

Keith’s chest seizes up even tighter, as if it’s possible, “Fuck, Shiro.”  

“Language baby.” he gives an admonishing tug on Keith’s hair but all it does is elicit a light moan.

“Really?” Keith laughs, wobbly and turned on, the endearment going straight to his core to kindle something mean, hot and roaring.

“Say it, Keith.” Shiro murmurs, leaving a litter of kisses on his jaw, stubble slightly chafing the skin and Keith knows it will leave small scratches that will attest to the conciliation of the Shiro in his dreams and the Shiro of reality.

Keith thinks of dangling the words before Shiro for longer, of using this power of knowing he has Shiro hard for him and needing him as much as Keith needs him. But Shiro curls an arm around his waist, pushing their cocks impossibly close and holds his jaw firmly as he kisses shy of Keith’s mouth. “Baby.”

“I need you, Shiro.” Keith gasps, fingers grasping for purchase in the long locks of Shiro’s lengthened hair.

That’s all it takes for Shiro to reach into Keith’s pants, for him to free Keith’s cock, smear the beading precum down his shaft, and wrap his fingers around it, dwarfing it. Keith’s hips don’t wait for his permission to buck, his control fraying further at Shiro’s size, at Shiro's single hand sheathing his entire cock.

“This is wrong, Shiro.” Keith says, gripping Shiro’s shoulders, riding into the motion of Shiro’s fist.

“It is?” Shiro stops abruptly, as if struck by a harsh slap.

“Yeah,” Keith nods quickly, trying to control his shaky breath and clear up the ambiguity before Shiro moves away. “I should be trying to make you feel better not the other way around.”

“Oh.” Shiro says like he’s coming out of a daze, his lax hold on Keith growing firm again. “This makes me feel better.” he laughs shortly and kisses Keith’s cheek. It wrenches hard on the strings of Keith’s existence.

“It does?”

“Yes. Touching you. Being touched by you. Having you close. I- can I kiss you?”

Keith strokes the hair from Shiro’s face, tucks the haloing strands behind his ears. He bends forward and touches his lips to Shiro’s.

Shiro freezes for a second. Then he melds into Keith and Keith can’t stop his lips from following Shiro’s in tugging up, starlight and dextrose exploding on his lips, in his mouth. Shiro kisses him soft, kisses him deep, jerks him off measuredly and proficient like he’s already a master of Keith’s body. Or maybe Keith’s just too far gone on Shiro. Either way the crescendo of his pleasure and emotions build and twine like twin helix on the verge of bursting.

“I missed you.” he says again for good measure between Shiro’s unabating kisses because the ache of the past months comes back in a vindictive riptide, tears through his every pore and batters his heart against his chest. It plays a wild beat of desperation, a consuming need to have Shiro know, have him understand how he couldn’t stand it, how a universe without him is cold and lonely and devoid of stars. And how nothing could have prepared him for how good Shiro makes him feel, whether he’s hugging Keith briefly to let him go or maundering the novelty of being together like this.

Shiro pauses the kisses, his smile looking the brightest it has since his return. “Missed you too,” he says, caressing Keith’s cheek, brief and compact with affection. “Are you gonna come for me baby?”

Keith whines, descant and wanton, and rides Shiro’s lap in earnest.

“There you go.” Shiro breathes, deep and husky. “You’re so beautiful, Keith.”

Keith scrambles desperately, deciding that he wants Shiro gone with him. He reaches for Shiro’s cock and lets out a helpless moan at its size, at the girth that barely lets him fit a fist around. His hips stutter like a coughing car on the brink of breakdown and he slots his mouth over Shiro’s in a messy kiss that suppresses all of Shiro’s moans.

Thinking better of it, Keith pulls away and buries himself in the crook of Shiro’s neck, feeling the vibrations of Shiro’s pleasured sounds as he smooths his own precum over him and gets him off fast.

 _“Keith,”_ Shiro turns his head into Keith’s neck. They’re buried in each other and so close, _so close._ Shiro sucks the skin his lips touch and Keith revels in pleasure, revels in the thought of carmine and cyan blossoming on his skin courtesy of Shiro.

Shiro who wants Keith to need him, Shiro who thinks he’s beautiful, Shiro who loves him.

“Shiro!” Keith shudders in a violent wave of rapture, pitched exclamation muffled in the corded muscle of Shiro’s shoulder, back arched and coming. Shiro holds onto him and comes, too, pressing up into Keith’s bottom and reciting his name in a rough hewn mantra. Shiro clamps on Keith’s nape, grip harsh enough to leave prints, and keeps Keith grounded. They solder together in pleasure, their essences rearranged and intertwined, woven together in bliss, beating hearts and devout delight.

“Keith,” Shiro says and it faintly registers through the climax haze that has liquified Keith. There’s fluid between them, indistinct who made what mess on who and their now flaccid cocks rest together in a licentious and tender reminder of what just transpired. “Keith,” Shiro repeats, pressing a kiss to his hair, ghosting his lips over Keith’s earlobe, onto the sensitive skin where his jaw and ear meet. “Keith,” he soothes his hands over Keith’s back, finds a path to his bare skin, tracks his way to Keith’s waist to stroke with loving gentleness as Keith basks in languor. “Look at me baby.”

That, at last, convinces Keith to lift his head and meet an equal measure of the adoration in Shiro’s voice displayed on his face.

“Good?”

Keith lets the warm, lazy smile take over. “Perfect, Shiro.”

**Author's Note:**

> hi! i started watching voltron like 5 days ago and i’m on like, season 5 but my brain had me at gunpoint and wouldn’t let me refuse to write this so here we are.  
> in true me style i am approximately 10 years late to everything but uh if you would allow me to dump my overwhelming sheith feels on you and be friends, here’s my [twitter](https://twitter.com/inkandrainstorm) :3


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